


between the devil and the deep blue sea

by giucorreias



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, M/M, Reverse Big Bang Challenge, Slow Burn, Some angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-02
Updated: 2020-04-02
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:20:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 15,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23436841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/giucorreias/pseuds/giucorreias
Summary: Jeremy offers himself as a sacrifice to the gods. To save his life, Jean takes him as his bride.
Relationships: Jeremy Knox/Jean Moreau, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 32
Kudos: 66
Collections: AFTG Reverse Big Bang 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the AFTG Reverse Bang 2020, based on [Deya's](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeyaAmaya) amazing prompt and art! It is theoretically a "Bride of the Water God" AU, though I'd say it's more loosely inspired by its concept then an AU per se. You don't need to know anything to read the fic!!
> 
> I'd like to thank staywithme--13 for being the amazing person she is, as well as TwistedRomance for cheering me on and being too kind about what she thinks of my writing.

“She’s in the hospital, honey.” His mother’s eyes are big and her voice is soft. Her hand cradles his cheek, and she looks at him with something akin to pity. He knows what she’s going to say before the next words leave her mouth. “Your grandma’s not going to get better.”

Jeremy leaves the house before she can say another word, heavy steps and door closing with a loud thud behind him. He sighs, deeply, before he walks away and lets his feet take him to where his feet always take him when he needs to think: the beach.

The sky is dark, greying clouds heavy with rain ready to set a storm upon the city. Any other day, he would be frustrated — any other day, rain would mean he can’t go surfing or swimming with his friends, can’t enjoy his favorite place in all of its glory. Today, however, the weather feels perfectly appropriate. It mirrors the way he feels inside.

He hears the waves crashing before he sees the yellow expansion of sand. He takes off his shoes, intent on feeling the texture against his toes, and does his best not to cry. It’s hard. The wind sounds like her voice, and the sea makes him think of the stories she used to tell him when he was young, before he started school, before his mother told her to stop.

There is thunder, and he looks up to watch as the sky lightens and darkens in turns. _The gods are angry_ , the thought comes unbidden. It sounds like her. He realizes, then, that it isn’t a thought — it’s a memory. 

He was six, perhaps. That day, the weather had been much like it is now, dark and loud, sky full of clouds. They were at her house, just the two of them, because his mother was (supposedly) working. She was holding a candle, hands cradling it carefully, and looking outside the window with something like worry marring her face.

_The gods are angry, sweetheart, and when they’re angry, bad things happen. Do you understand?_

He had nodded. _Like when mother is angry and yells at you_.

He remembers the details of her face with stark clarity, like a picture. Her smile, the way it made her look sad. Her lowered eyebrows, already white. The bun, not perfectly atop her head, but falling down to the side as if she couldn’t bother with fixing it. Her dark blue shawl, the color of the ocean, wrapped around her shoulders like armor. _Yes_ , she had said. _And no_ . _The gods are much more powerful than your mother. They are capable of much more destruction._

To his young mind, the logic was sound. _How do we make them not angry anymore?_

She had put the candle in the window sill, then lit it. The wind had been strong, loud and violent, and he remembers thinking the flame wouldn’t hold against it. But his grandmother had the flame between her hands, wrinkled but sure, and when she took her hands off, the flame wavered, but didn’t flicker out.

_That_ , she had told him, once satisfied with the candle. _Is the right question_.

He closes his eyes and thinks he feels the raindrops against his face. When he opens them, he realizes they’re just his tears. He misses her. He misses her house and her face, he misses her strength. He misses the way she had a thousand little quirks no one else could understand. He misses the warmth of her arms when she held him and the cadence of her voice when she lectured him about the ways of the world.

He misses her. _He misses her_. And she isn’t even dead. Just sick. And not getting better. 

He wipes out his tears, angry at himself for letting them out, then looks back into the ocean. He knows what he expects to see: the furious crashing of waves against the shore. He knows what he doesn’t expect to see: a child.

“Hey,” he calls, but the kid doesn’t look at him. “Hey!” He calls again, walking towards the water. “It’s dangerous in the ocean, kid.” This time, the child does turn its head to look at him. It’s a boy, with striking blue eyes and a number three tattoo on his cheek. The kid’s wearing strange clothing, dark hair sticking to his forehead, all wet. “Come on, you’re not very far. Where are your parents?”

Just as he says that, a huge wave comes crashing down from behind the boy, and once it breaks the kid is nowhere to be seen. “Shit,” Jeremy says. He takes off his shirt, throws it on the sand alongside his shoes, then jumps into the water.

The first thing he notices is the cold. God, is it _cold_. Cold and unforgiving, trying to push him away onto the sand. “Kid!” he calls, hoping for an answer, even a random noise. But the wind and the waves are louder, and he’s being pushed away. He swears again, swimming towards the place he had last seen the kid, and tries to hold his own against another huge wave that comes. “Ki-” he tries to call again, but suddenly his mouth is full of water and his throat is burning. He coughs, disoriented, not entirely sure what’s going on until he feels himself being pushed again and there’s suddenly silence.

He’s drowning.

He thinks perhaps his whole life will go through his mind, like a movie, but all he can hear is his grandmother’s voice. _This is how we make them not angry anymore_ . He almost sees it: the two of them, sitting on a table, her hands arranging food on a bowl. _We offer them a gift_.

_A gift?_

_Something meaningful, to appease them. Food is fine, usually. Sometimes you need something stronger, like an object you hold dear. Sometimes you need to offer them your life._

Then, Jeremy had offered her his favorite toy car, to add to the bowl. _A gift_ . It had looked strange, sitting there amongst fruit and bread. Now, he thinks: _Maybe I’m the gift_.

He thinks: _If you’re hearing, I offer you myself_.

And then he doesn’t think anything, anymore.

  
  
  
  


He wakes up to anxious eyes and has to blink a few times before he is able to see properly. The kid — the same kid he was trying to save, though his eyes look different, now, less electric blue, more grey — is looking down at him, crouched over to peer at his face. Jeremy tries to say something, but his throat is burning and his voice doesn’t work properly.

He coughs.

This is not the hospital, not the beach. He’s laying on the ground, which is hard and therefore not sand, and he can see the ceiling, made of colorful blue glass. With the light coming from above, the whole room looks like it’s underwater.

The silence is deafening.

“Where- where are we?” he asks, but he knows it is a dumb question even before the words leave his lips. The kid probably doesn’t know anything. Still, he answers.

“Nowhere.” The kid moves away, and Jeremy forces himself to sit up. Everything hurts. His head, his lungs, his legs. “Nowhere you’d know, anyway.”

“Are we dead?” He remembers drowning. He remembers the kid drowned, too.

The kid says something in a language Jeremy doesn’t understand. Crosses his arms. Then answers, “No.”

Jeremy frowns. The kid gets up and starts to leave, and Jeremy is too weak to follow him. “Wait,” he asks, but the kid either doesn’t hear him or isn’t willing to stay, because soon enough he’s out the door and Jeremy is alone. He coughs again, trying to breathe slowly, then looks around for the lack of anything else to do. The place is different from anything else he has ever encountered. The walls are white and blue at turns, the room wide. There are decorations on the walls that show landscapes that look impossible, and, if not for them, the room would be bare.

Except- there’s a fountain at the exact center of the room. It’s strange, the way the water rotates slowly up and down, as if controlled by magic, as if the time was slowed and gravity didn’t matter. He gets up, slowly, legs trembling under the effort. The fountain is right there, not three feet away from him, and he finds himself peering into it.

It doesn’t mirror him. Instead, what Jeremy sees is the image of a beach, the waves crashing against the sand. It’s distorted, naturally, but it’s clearly _there_. So entranced, he doesn’t notice he has company until it touches him in the shoulder.

He startles. He turns around, and sees a woman. She’s short, wearing a long and flowing garment that reminds him of a dress, and her hair is colorful, like the rainbow. Over her clothes she’s wearing a medallion, the pendant as big as his fist, with something that looks like a crest in it.

“My apologies,” she says once he looks at her face. “I did not mean to startle you.”

“Oh no, it’s fine,” he answers. “I was distracted by the- fountain.”

“My name is Renee. Jean sent me to you, so I could show you around.” She puts her hand on his shoulder again. “But first, let me heal you.”

Jeremy blinks. “Heal me…?”

Renee doesn’t answer. Her eyes are closed, and her hair sways and if shaken by a breeze. The room smells like grass, for a moment, like grass and petrichor, and slowly Jeremy feels the burning sensation on his lungs disappear, the strength return to his legs. When she opens her eyes again, they’re shining unnaturally green.

“Heal you.” She agrees. “How are you feeling, now?”

“As if I hadn’t almost drowned.”

She grins. It’s sharp, and altogether unexpected on her face. “Good. Come on, then. We have much to discuss.”

  
  
  
  


Renee has surprisingly wide steps for such a short woman, and Jeremy finds himself having trouble accompanying her. “The palace is big, but most parts of it are currently inhabitable. You don’t have to concern yourself with them,” she explains. Her voice is soft, sweet. “We’re only using a few of the rooms, on the main structure. I’ll show them to you. Before that, however, we need to talk about the wedding.”

Jeremy stops walking. “The _wedding_.”

Renee stops, too. Her face looks serene as she says: “You offered yourself to the King. He accepted. So, _yes_ , the wedding.”

“I- _what_?” Jeremy slides his fingers into his hair, remembers how he thought his life might appease the wrath of the gods. He expected to die. Apparently, he got betrothed instead.

She nods. “It’s in the old rules. A mortal that offers themselves as sacrifice may be taken as a bride if the King so desires. In the old days, those were usually women.” Renee taps her cheek, thoughtful. “But a man works too, apparently.”

Jeremy feels his heart start to beat faster. He remembers his grandmother’s stern voice telling him _don’t mess with the gods if you don’t understand the rules_ after he had tried to ask them for rain on the day of his birthday, after he had gotten a storm. 

He closes his eyes. “Right,” he says, finally, voice faint. “Apparently.” He takes a deep breath. Renee taps his back, comforting. He looks at her, then, the way her face betrays nothing of what she’s thinking, how her colorful hair frames her face and makes her look ethereal, even more than her flowing robes. He takes another deep breath to compose himself and lets it out slowly. “What is it that we need to discuss about the wedding?”

Renee smiles. “I’m glad you asked that.”

They talk about flowers and colors schemes and food. She seems in a hurry to pack as much of his opinions at once, and changes subjects very quickly. One minute they might be talking about his preferences in clothing, the other she might remember a detail about the flowers they haven’t discussed and bring it up again. She doesn’t make any notes, but she seems to remember everything he’s saying with enviable accuracy.

As they talk, they also walk, and sometimes Renee might interrupt herself to explain where they are, and where they’re going. From what she’d said, Jeremy had thought they might not take very long through their tour through the palace, but the building is so big that “only a few rooms” means, apparently, more than a dozen of them.

He doesn’t know what that means for the real size of the palace, but he’s glad it means he doesn’t have to tour all of it. He doesn’t think he could take it.

“What about my- fiancé.” Jeremy asks, awkward, after a lull in the conversation. He’s curious about this Jean person she mentioned. What he might be like. Renee has been fairly forthcoming with information, so Jeremy isn’t expecting her cryptic answer.

“You’ll meet him when it’s time,” she says, looking at the sky.  
  


Jeremy had figured that _when it’s time_ meant at their wedding day, because that sounded like an old rule that might make sense or whatever, but apparently _when it’s time_ meant _tonight_. Renee led him to a big door he hadn’t already seen and instructed him to go through without her.

Jean isn’t at all what Jeremy was expecting. The gods in his grandmother’s story rarely had appearances, just personalities, and usually they were either very kind or very angry, saving people and raiding crops at turns. Sometimes, they would ruin a mortal’s life without meaning to, and sometimes they would save a mortal’s life on purpose.

Jeremy had pictured someone a bit like the paintings of Zeus. Grey hair, long beard, muscles, a stony face. A white toga, to complement everything, and maybe a crown atop the head. Jean’s clothes are like the ones Renee had been wearing, the ones Jeremy was given, long and flowing. He has long, dark hair and striking grey eyes. Instead of a crown, he wears a simple, red band. One of his cheeks has an ugly scar, but it doesn’t subtract from the beauty of his face, only adds to the otherwordly quality it presents. Like Renee, he looks ethereal, eternal, _powerful_.

The room — which he can only call a dining hall, because is is _big_ — has a long wooden table that looks even longer as it is currently serving a single, solitary figure.

He approaches, and eyes follow his movements until he sits. The man, the god, his future husband, doesn’t say anything, just waits for him to settle before he starts eating. Jeremy wonders if there is some sort of etiquette he has to follow, if there is anything he has to avoid saying. If he’s allowed to say anything at all. He might have asked, but Jean looks so closed off, eyebrows drawn and movements tense, that Jeremy doesn’t dare. He knows very well that he’s only here because he offered himself to _appease_ this man, which implies he had been angry to begin with.

Jeremy doesn’t want to risk his wrath by doing something he shouldn’t. Not now. Not on his first day. So instead, he eats his admittedly delicious meal in silence, and leaves when Jean leaves.

Renee is waiting for him outside, and her face betrays nothing, though it strikes Jeremy that she doesn’t seem as happy as she had been: there’s a harshness to her serenity that wasn’t there before. She puts her hand on his shoulder, then says: “Let me show you to your room.”

  
  
  
  


He throws himself into the bed without exploring the room, holds his covers around him, tight, in search of comfort. He feels lonely. That night, he dreams of his grandmother, all alone on her hospital room. He knows his mother won’t visit her. He wishes dearly he could.


	2. Chapter 2

He wakes up to a knock on the door. His first instinct is to grumble about the time and bury himself under the covers, again, but the sensation of the pillow isn’t familiar, the mattress is too soft, and he forces himself to open his eyes.

It wasn’t a dream.

“Shit,” he hears himself say. “Shit.”

Someone knocks on the door again. “Jeremy?” He recognizes the voice from the day before. It’s Renee. “Are you up? There are some things we need to do.”

“Just a minute,” he asks, then looks around the room. He didn’t look around the day before, too depressed to do so. But it’s- big. He doesn’t think there’s anything small anywhere in this place. The walls are, like everywhere else, white and blue, though one of them has a huge painting of two koi fish chasing each other’s tails, one of them bright orange, the other black.

Beyond the bed there is a sturdy desk, empty of anything, and a beautiful, ornate wooden drawer. He changes into the clothes he finds there — very different from the ones he usually wears — then finally, finally opens the door.

Renee looks exactly the way she looked the day before. 

“Good morning,” she says, then approaches to fix the collar of his robes, then the sleeve. It takes a while before she’s satisfied with the way he looks. “Just one more thing,” she declares, then offers him a medallion much like the one she is wearing, though the pendant itself is different. Instead of a thick square with a dot on the center, he can see two wavy lines parallel to each other.

“The water- crest?” He asks, and she nods. 

“Jean’s symbol.” She clarifies. “It’s only appropriate that you wear it. In fact, you should have it on you whenever you’re outside your quarters. Specially in situations in which you think you might meet with people who aren’t from this clan.”

“Your symbol is different,” Jeremy says. Renee nods again. “Whose symbol is it?”

“Mine,” she smiles, and her eyes twinkle.

Renee takes them to the courtyard, which is a mess of people running up and down, carrying around flowers and cloth, chairs and food. Jeremy offers Renee a panicked look, which she responds with a blink. “There is much to be done if we want the courtyard to be done by dusk.”

“Did you plan a wedding in a day?” Jeremy knows he sounds sceptical.

“It was a joint effort,” she says, serene, and walks up to a woman who is carrying a bunch of flowers. “What do you think, Jeremy? White or Yellow?”

Jeremy blinks. “White?”

Renee takes a batch of flowers from the woman’s hands, and waves her away, presumably to discard the wrong flowers. Jeremy looks around. He doesn’t see his future husband anywhere, but he does see the kid he had tried to save the day before. Checking that Renee is satisfactorily busy organizing an aisle, Jeremy walks up to the only other familiar face he knows.

The kid’s hair is short, spiky, and he’s wearing beautiful red robes, as well as Jean’s symbol. He’s currently commandeering a group of people into building an arch, crossed arms and authoritative voice, pointing out the mistakes. The kid doesn’t seem to notice his approach, but as Jeremy gets within a few feet of him, his voice carries a question. “What do you think?”

Jeremy looks at the arch. It’s made out of metal, decorated by light blue flowers. There’s a piece of cloth coming down from the top, with the same symbol of his medallion. “It’s pretty,” he voices his own thoughts.

“Good,” the kid says.

“Oh, I didn’t have the chance to ask you before. What’s your name?”

The kid is about to answer, when someone else arrives. It’s a tall man, with short hair and green eyes, the tattoo of a two on his face. Jeremy wonders, briefly, what it means, before his thoughts are interrupted by the man’s voice. “Je- uh- lien… I need you to revise our plans to-”

“Right, yes, I’ll get into that, Kevin.” The kid, who is apparently called Julien, interrupts Kevin before he’s able to finish his sentence. “We’ll talk later, Jeremy,” the kid waves at him and walks away, briskly, towards the entrance of the palace.

It’s funny, to see such adult gestures on a kid. It makes him think of himself, trying to act more like his mother when he was eight. Renee doesn’t let him get too lost in thought, though, because she approaches him again to ask for yet another opinion.

  
  
  
  


Julien comes back, eventually, and pulls him around to make sure he likes what’s going on with the decoration. It’s endearing, the way he won’t let anyone do anything unless Jeremy is satisfied with it.

“Where’s Jean?” Jeremy finds himself asking at some point, after hours of work and not having seen him even once.

“Busy,” Julien answers. He’s like that, when he’s not ordering people around: answering questions with one-word sentences, rarely bothering with explaining what he means.

“Is he often busy?” Jeremy prompts. Julien looks up at him, raised eyebrows.

“Always.”

Jeremy snorts. He understands the tone. It’s the same one he used to talk about when people asked him about his mother. “Won’t you tell me what he’s like?”

Julien sighs. “He’s a coward and a liar. He’s so very selfish. And he’s always making the worst possible choices and hurting other people.” He plucks a flower from a vase, then turns the vase around so it looks more pleasant. “I’m sorry you were saddled with him.”

Jeremy feels very nervous very suddenly. He doesn’t want to hate his-  _ husband _ . And this doesn’t sound like he is a nice person. Julien looks up at him, but Jeremy doesn’t know what do say. “This is the most words I have seen you string together since we started talking hours ago.”

Julien blinks. “You should have asked me about Jean since the beginning, then.”

“Or maybe not asked you at all.”

“I’m sorry,” he sighs again. Then, after a moment of silence: “I should go.”

“Wait,” Jeremy tries to hold his wrist, but he isn’t fast enough, and once again he watches Julien walk away.

“We should get you ready, as well.” Renee calls for him before he can run after the kid.

  
  
  


He looks outside the window as evening falls. He used to wonder what his wedding day would be like, and in all of his daydreams and wondering, he never thought it would be like this: to a man he doesn’t know, a person he doesn’t love. Someone who isn’t nice, or kind, or sweet.

“You look beautiful,” Renee says, a smile on her face, interrupting the downright spiralling of Jeremy’s thoughts.

Jeremy turns around, to face her, and catches his own reflection in the mirror. He barely looks like himself, with the flower crown and the flowing clothes, the crest resting against his chest. 

“You know, I think I agree with you.” He tries to smile, but it doesn’t stick to his face. He sighs, instead.

Renee puts a hand on his shoulder. Jeremy looks at her so he doesn’t have to look at his own reflection. “Do you know what a wedding is like?” she asks.

Jeremy nods. “My grandmother used to tell me stories. I used to think they were bedtime stories, fairytales. But I’m beginning to think that’s not what they were. She knew about this, somehow. Gods and old rules and strange weddings.”

“A long time ago, years and years in the past, we were known to every mortal. Modernity came, and we were forgotten by most, but not all. Some families still keep to the old traditions even if they don’t know it, and some keep to the old traditions knowing exactly what they are.”

“Grandma used to light candles to the clouds whenever it was raining,” he says. “She used to put offerings in the window sill to appease the gods’ anger.”

“And you offered yourself to Jean to stop a storm,” Renee completes.

“There’s something wrong with the weather. It rains too much, the beaches are too wild. Streets are often flooded. People are losing their homes and their possessions, everything they’ve worked for. I thought- well, people are very worried about Climate Change. So I thought maybe it was that. But if it isn’t- if it’s just Jean’s anger, then- does he not care that people are losing their lives?”

“There is much about gods that you do not understand, Jeremy. I cannot tell you all that is to say about it, but I will tell you this: Jean cares very much when people are losing their lives.”

“Then why-?”

“I’m sorry, Jeremy, but we have to go now.”

  
  
  
  


The courtyard is beautiful. Jeremy was there to help embellish it, but it’s different to see it finished. There are people everywhere, people he doesn’t know, people who are staring at him full of curiosity on their faces.

Standing at the forefront of everything is Jean. He looks majestic, breathtaking.

Renee taps him on the shoulder once, a quick comfort that isn’t comforting at all, then leaves him alone to walk the aisle. The crest feels heavy on his chest, and for a moment he freezes, mind empty. There’s something like butterflies on his stomach and he doesn’t want to mess this up. He walks, one foot after the other, until he’s standing in front of Jean, who is looking at him with deep, grey eyes.

Jean offers him his hand, and Jeremy takes it. Jean’s skin is warm, his grip is firm, and there are calluses on the palm that are rough against his skin. It surprises him. Jeremy takes a deep breath, then offers Jean his other hand. They’re holding each other’s hand, now, wrists crossed. Then they kneel together, in front of everyone, in front of the altar.

“I make you three promises,” Jean says. It’s the first time he hears his husband’s voice. His voice is clear, solemn, and Jeremy knows this is an spectacle for the people watching. Yet Jean’s hold on his hand is gentle. “I promise you myself, so that I’m faithful. I promise you my house, so that it may keep you safe. I promise you my future, so that we may weather whichever storms come our way together.”

“I make you three promises,” Jeremy responds. The words come naturally to him, because he had liked the love stories best when he was a child, and those always had a wedding. Still, his voice trembles. “I promise you myself, so that I am faithful. I promise you my effort, so that we build a home together. I promise you my future, so that we may weather whichever storms come our way together.”

Jean is still looking at him, when he says. “Please do your very best to welcome my husband to this house.” His voice carries, and everybody cheers.

  
  
  
  


After the ceremony and the after-party, after Jeremy is forced to socialize with people he doesn’t know and who don’t know him, people who look at him with barely-contained suspicion, when his patience is wearing thin because he is tired of having to navigate this new position he’s been thrown into without being prepared for it, his now-husband walks him to his room.

“You weren’t there to help with organizing.” Jeremy doesn’t know why he says it, except that they’ve been walking in silence and Jean is more inscrutable than a stone. Maybe he wants to see his reaction. Maybe he wants to fill the silence. Maybe he just wants to vent his frustration with the whole situation he’s put himself through.

Jean keeps walking in silence and Jeremy almost thinks he won’t get an answer. “I was busy.”

“Too busy to help with your own wedding?” Jeremy thinks he should stop talking now, except he wants to know what kind of man Jean is. Julien painted a bleak picture, but seemed to be the only one to actively dislike the man. Maybe he saw something nobody else did. Maybe Jeremy just didn’t know how to read the other people well enough to know their opinions about his husband.

“Yes,” he says, tone careful. 

“Why did you go through with it?” he asks. He has to.

“You offered yourself to me.” Jean answers as if that is answer enough. Maybe, in his head, it is. Jeremy doesn’t think it can be that simple.

“But-”

“Would you rather I let you die?” There’s something about Jean’s tone that Jeremy doesn’t recognize. He doesn’t know if it’s irritation, or amusement. Jean’s face is as inscrutable as his silence.

Before Jeremy can think of an appropriate answer, they arrive at his door, and Jean lets go of his arm. “Good night, Jeremy,” he says, softly, at odds with his tone so far, then turns on his heels and leaves without another word.

Jeremy opens the door to his room and gets inside.


	3. Chapter 3

_ “There is a world, much like ours, ruled by the gods.” His grandmother always started her stories like that. “And in this world, there are four kingdoms: the kingdom of air, the kingdom of fire, the kingdom of earth, and the kingdom of water.” _

_ He was laying on her bed, tucked under her blanket. She was sitting beside him, on top of the covers, her skin illuminated only by the light of her bedside lamp. Her hand was carding through his hair. _

_ “I know that part!” _

_ “Oh?” she smiled at him. “You can be the one to tell me, then.” _

_ “I like it better when you do it!” _

_ “Oh, very well. Where was I?” _

_ “You were gonna tell me about the Emperor.” _

_ “So I was,” she chuckled, and he let himself lay more comfortably. “A long time ago, the kingdoms were constantly fighting. Each believed they were better than the other, and deserved to rule them all. And as ever, their fighting affected our world. There were storms, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions. Life was harsh, and people were dying.” _

_ Her hand stopped. She looked sad, for a moment. “But one of the gods did not like that. He understood that every element had its strengths and weaknesses, and they were all equally powerful. So he set out to build amulets, each representing an element, each granting him this element’s power. And in the end, he managed to conquer every other nation and became the first ever Emperor. He made them stop fighting. And then he instituted one rule-” She paused. “Do you know what this is?” _

_ “To become Emperor you need to go through four trials and prove you have the strengths of every element!” _

_ “The swiftness of air, the aggressiveness of fire, the steadiness of earth, and the gentleness of water.” _

_ “Gentleness isn’t a strength, though.” _

_ “You’re wrong, honey.” She pursed her lips. “There’s nothing stronger than being kind in the face of adversity. Now go to sleep.” _

  
  
  


He can’t find Jean anywhere. He woke up with the intent to apologize for being rude to his husband the night before, to try and fix his first impression, but despite the fact it is well within morning, the palace is almost devoid of life. He doesn’t see any faces, familiar or otherwise. Not Renee, not Julien, not Jean.

He ends up wandering around, not entirely lost, and finds himself inside a room he hadn’t seen before. It’s breathtakingly beautiful, with glass instead of walls, instead of a roof, and water on the other side. There is a blue-ish hue to the light coming into the room, which flickers slowly as it is filtered through the water. He feels like he’s inside an aquarium.

At the center of the room there’s a wooden bench. Just as he sits down, he notices a colorful blur out of the corner of his eyes. Before he can turn to check what it is, the blur comes into his field of vision: a dozen or more colored fish, white and blue and orange, weaving around some sort of dance.

He finds himself smiling, despite himself.

It’s how he’s found, half an hour later, by a man he doesn’t quite know — but recognizes from his wedding day. His name is Kevin, Jeremy remembers just as sits beside him, long legs folded under the bench, and looks at the ceiling in a move that looks too practiced to be natural.

“It’s a wonder this place hasn’t been destroyed yet,” the man says, breaching the silence with a forcefully pleasant tone. Jeremy wonders at his presence, at what he’s doing here. He lets himself slouch a little, too, and look at the ceiling, though there are no fish currently swimming about. “Though I will admit it is very pretty. It might just be Jean’s favorite room.”

“I have seen only part of the palace,” Jeremy answers, because he isn’t one to deny friendliness even though he doesn’t think it is entirely genuine. “But this place has an etherealness to it that you don’t find often in the place where I come from. What do you call it?”

“The human world.”

“The human world,” Jeremy nods. “It’s like an aquarium, but without time constraints and without other people. It’s very peaceful.”

Jeremy lets himself look down and towards the newcomer, only to realize the newcomer is also looking towards him. Jeremy smiles, because smiling comes easily and he’s too tired to do anything else. “The only problem, I guess, is that I can’t touch the water. I quite like- pools and lakes, beaches. Swimming.”

Jeremy notices the man smile. “That’s fortunate, isn’t it? You married into a water clan. You’ll find many places around where you can swim.”

Jeremy hums, absent-mindedly. “I wonder.”

  
  
  


Kevin takes him outside the palace, through a path of white marble and half a dozen pools. They walk through the courtyard, which he vaguely recognizes from the day before — though it is already empty, surprisingly — and through a half-wild garden, with plants Jeremy has never seen before, in different colors.

Finally, they reach what seems to be some woods. Distantly, he hears the sound of wild water, and not five minutes later they find themselves at the banks of a river.

“I found this place a few days after Jean offered me sanctuary,” Kevin says. “The palace is beautiful, but… after you spend some time in the human world, it’s difficult to get back to the way the gods work.”

Jeremy sits down on the grass, and starts taking off his shoes. “The way the gods work?”

“If they’re only surrounded by their own element, they’re happy.”

“I saw a garden.”

“Yes, I quite think one of the previous owners also had a human bride. I mean,  _ spouse _ . Human  _ spouse _ .”

Jeremy snorts. He puts his feet inside the water, then lets himself lay on the grass and look at the sky. The water is cold, as expected, and the sky is  _ cloudless _ . After months of dealing with storm after storm, with increasingly worse earthquakes and wild climate, seeing an empty blue sky seems almost unreal.

He breathes. He lets the seconds go by slowly, lets it turn into minutes, but he feels… restless. If he were at home- or, well, back where he used to live, with his mother, he’d have a thousand little things to do, things his mother was always  _ too busy _ or  _ too tired _ to attempt. He wonders if time passes the same way in the human world as it passes here. He wonders if his mother has already realized he’s gone. He wonders if she thinks he drowned, if they found his shoes on the beach and extrapolated.

He twists around and lays over one of his arms, turning towards Kevin. “I asked Julien about Jean,” he says, because if nothing else he can at least figure out more about his husband.

“Julien?” Kevin blinks. “Ah.” And then: “What did he say?”

“Nothing good.”

Kevin nods. “That doesn’t surprise me.”

“No?”

“Julien is- well. He is not at the best position to judge Jean’s character.”

“What would you say Jean is like?”

Kevin looks up, then down, and takes some time before he answers it properly. “He’s- well, he’s not a nice person. But he’s- honorable. He offered me sanctuary even though I did nothing to deserve it, saved my life despite the fact that I abandoned him before.”

“That sounds- complicated.” Jeremy feels his eyebrows raise towards his hairline, trying to wrap his head around Kevin’s words. Everything sounds needlessly convoluted, though he supposes it fits nicely with the drama of every single myth he’s ever heard his grandma tell him.

Kevin shrugs. “It’s not my story to tell,” he sighs. Slides his fingers through his own hair. Hesitates. “I’m very thankful for what he’s done for me.”

Jeremy shakes his head. He isn’t sure what to think about it, and decides not to. Instead, he pushes himself to his feet and starts getting rid of all his layers. Since he’s here, and since it’s a great day, swimming sounds like a great idea.

  
  
  


Later, as night starts to fall, Kevin walks him back to the palace. Jeremy is feeling pleasantly tired, warm skin and wet hair, explaining with expansive gestures the plot of the latest marvel movie, which Kevin hasn’t watched yet. He doesn’t realize they’re not alone until Kevin stops suddenly and says, with a surprisingly soft tone:

“Jean.” There’s something hesitant about his posture, the way he shuffles his feet, and Jeremy wonders if they’re not supposed to be together, but discards the idea. Jean doesn’t seem surprised to see them together.

“Kevin,” he answers, a deceptively mild tone, and approaches them with wide footsteps, robes billowing around his legs. “Jeremy.”

“Hi,” Jeremy says, wrong-footed, unsure of the etiquette code. There’s a second of awkward silence, and Jeremy feels himself breathe deeply. “How was your day?”

If Jeremy hadn’t been watching Jean’s face so closely, he probably wouldn’t have noticed the way his lips twitch, how the left corner raises slightly. “Busy,” he answers, which seems to be his go-to answer to anything. The awkward silence is gone, though, which is what matters: Jean takes one last step, stopping right beside Jeremy, and takes his arm. “What about you?”

“Pleasant,” he says.

It seems to be what Jean needs to hear, because they start walking again, and his husband turns to Kevin. “Neil wanted to talk to you,” he tells him, and Kevin seems to perk up. “He’s still in the hall, if you want to find him.”

Kevin looks at Jeremy, then towards the palace, and offers him a sheepish smile. Jeremy finds himself smiling back.

“I’ll see you around?” He finds himself asking, waving slightly, and Kevin’s smile turns a bit brighter.

“I’ll see you around,” he confirms, then leaves, long legs taking him away faster than Jeremy was expecting him to go, and leaving him behind and all alone with his husband.

His  _ husband _ .

It’s still a very wild concept to wrap his mind around.

Jean doesn’t seem to be in any particular hurry, hand still firmly holding his arm, and they walk towards the palace. Jeremy feels torn between wanting to ask him a thousand questions — why is it that the more he asks around about this man, the more it seems there is to figure out? — and feeling strangely tongue-tied.

He waits to see if Jean is going to say anything, but after they walk several meters in silence, he realizes he’ll have to carry any conversation himself. He says: “I wanted to apologize about yesterday.”

Jean’s hand flexing on his arm is the only sign that his husband is surprised. “Oh?”

“I said things I had no place saying.”

“Yet you did not say anything I did not deserve to hear.” Jeremy blinks.

“I’m not sure what kind of things you do. I don’t know much about this world.” Jeremy waves around, and Jean hums. “So I can’t judge you for being- busy. This marriage has been thrust upon you just as much as it was thrust upon me, and I suppose I should be thankful for being alive.”

“Some things are worse than death.”

“Somehow I don’t think being married to you applies.” Jeremy finds himself amused at the dramatics.

“Not yet, at least.” Jean mutters, low enough that Jeremy might not have heard if he wasn’t paying attention. Then he sighs, looks at Jeremy again, and offers him a soft look. “Tell me about your day.”

Jeremy smiles at him, beams at the friendliness, and Jean looks away.


	4. Chapter 4

Jeremy didn’t expect that being married to a god would be something considered boring, but it is. He doesn’t have much to do with himself, and spends most of his days walking around the palace in a daze, exploring the parts that aren’t hopelessly destroyed by something he doesn’t know.

He sighs. He has things he likes to do, naturally. Sometimes Renee shows up, and they talk about this new world. Sometimes Kevin shows up, and they go to the river and swim. Today, though, both Kevin and Renee are apparently busy, and Jeremy finds himself stumbling around with empty hands and an emptiness in his head he doesn’t know what to do with.

He hasn’t seen Julien in a while, the kid often busy and sometimes too tired, so it’s a surprise when he enters one of the living rooms and finds him sleeping on a nook under the window, the sunlight making his skin look shiny. The kid looks like a cat, all spread out and seeking warmth. He finds himself softening, the annoyance at not having anything to do going away, and supports his weight against the doorway.

It’s rare that he gets the chance to see the kid so tranquil, his face restful in his sleep. He watches him for a few seconds, noticing how similar he is to Jean. The same facial structure, the same nose, the same jaw. Just… a lot younger and cuter. And the hair, of course, is definitely shorter.

He gets inside, trying not to make too much noise, but the kid opens his eyes when he approaches. Jeremy smiles at him, because he looks so cute when he’s all confused because of his sleep, his hair sticking out on all sides. “Hey,” he says, and the kid blinks at him once, twice, before answering too.

“Good afternoon, Jeremy.”

Jeremy sits himself beside him under the window. It’s really a nice place to be, warm enough because of the sun, but not too hot because of the breeze coming in from outside. Julien stretches and then yawns, and Jeremy finds himself smiling bigger.

“Hey, kid,” he says again. “What is it that you do for fun around here?”

“I don’t, generally,” Julien answers.

“What!” Jeremy perks up, outraged. “How old are you? Nine? You should be having fun! All the time! And nothing else!”

“I-”

“Come on, kid. Let’s do something. You and me and no boring adults.”

“You are a boring adult.”

“Adult, uh, maybe. _Maybe_. But boring? No. Bored, yes, boring, never!” Jeremy holds Julien by the wrist, and pulls him up. “Tell me what you like to do.”

Julien blinks. Several seconds go by, and he doesn’t answer, brow furrowed. “I don’t know. Reading, maybe.”

“That’s a nice hobby. I like to read too. When I was a kid- younger than you are now, I think, I used to go to my grandmother’s house all the time. She used to tell me stories about the gods. She had- _has_ a very soft voice, just _meant_ to tell stories.” Jeremy looks outside, into the sky. “Then I grew up, and stopped going there because my mother didn’t like it. But I miss her dearly.”

“What happened to her?”

“She’s sick. Dying. In the hospital, last I heard.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright. Humans grow old and die. It’s part of our nature.”

“You might be human, Jeremy, but you won’t be mortal for very long. You married Jean.”

“That’s-” Footsteps interrupt what he is saying, and Jeremy looks up. Renee comes into the room, hair up on a ponytail and a huge warhammer on her hands, face set in a grim line. Jeremy blinks once, twice, but her image doesn’t change.

Julien gets up, starts walking towards her. It’s automatic for Jeremy to raise his hand and hold his wrist. “What are you doing?”

“Duty calls.”

“You’re just a kid.” Julien raises his eyebrows, and Jeremy isn’t sure if he’s surprised or annoyed at his comment. “You can’t-”

Julien touches Jeremy’s hand on his wrist, but it’s Renee that says: “You can let him go, Jeremy. The battle is done. He won’t do anything dangerous.”

Jeremy still hesitates for a second. Julien pries his fingers off — gently — and then walks away. Before she follows, Renee sends Jeremy a look he can’t read.

  
  
  


Jeremy can’t help but rant at Kevin during the afternoon. About what a real childhood looks like, and how Julien deserves better. About being allowed to play and have fun. About the importance of hobbies in the development of the brain.

“I just can’t believe that Julien doesn’t have a _single thing_ he does for fun.” Jeremy finishes off, out of breath after speaking for so long. “Everyone has something.”

Kevin shrugs. “That’s just who he is.”

“He’s a _child_.”

“Jeremy… look, not everyone is a happy child. And not everyone has the chance to find out what they like to do while they are kids. It’s- you don’t know a lot about Julien.”

Jeremy lets out a deep breath. “I’m going to have words with Jean, the next time I see him. They’re going to be angry words.”

“You didn’t listen to a word I said.”

“I did, I just disagree with you.”

  
  
  


Turns out that the next time he sees Jean is that very evening. He’s just sitting there, calmly waiting for Jeremy, and immediately Jeremy feels his blood boil. “You!” he says, yells, and Jean looks up at him, startled. Jeremy thinks _good_. He says: “We need to talk about your kid!”

“My kid…?” Jean puts his hand over the table, and turns his head to the side.

“You can’t _do_ this to him. Have him work a lot and not give him time to enjoy being a kid. Do you know he doesn’t do anything for fun? That he doesn’t have any hobbies? He barely acts as a child as it is! It was amusing in the beginning, how grown up he seems to be, but every day it just worries me more!”

“He’s none of your business, Jeremy.”

“He’s none of anyone’s business, apparently! Does no one else worry about his well-being? What kind of father are you?”

“I didn’t marry you so you could meddle with my affairs.”

“You didn’t marry me for anything, since all I do is walk around the palace doing nothing while your kid is so overworked he sleeps when he should be playing!” Jeremy shakes his head, feeling frustration well up inside of him, then lets out another deep breath. “You know what? I think I’m not so hungry anymore. Good night.”

He turns on his heels and walks away, closing the door behind him. The ground shakes, once, and as he walks past one of the aquariums, he notices how scared the fish are, how the water is shaking inside. He doesn’t stop to look, so he doesn’t see the glass crack.

That night is a long, loud night, with a storm raging outside almost until morning.


	5. Chapter 5

He wakes up to a book at the foot of his door. It looks old, fragile, different from the books he has read in his life until now. It looks like something out of a medieval library, perhaps, and entirely out of place on his modern hands. He opens it carefully, so as not to break it, and the first thing he finds is a note inside.

_To help with your boredom._

_— J_

Jeremy fights his first instinct, which is to crumple the note and throw it away, and leaves the note where it is. It does seem like an interesting book, a collection of tales and myths of different gods, and Jeremy wonders if he’s being bribed, if he’s being _pacified_. He feels bitter, something that he isn’t all too used to feeling, and doesn’t know exactly what to do to stop it.

He leaves his room. Just outside his door, on the corridor, there’s a painting lying on the ground, from where it fell the night before. He puts it up, notices how it’s torn on the side, and sighs deeply. He wonders if he should apologize. He doesn’t think he’s wrong, he _can’t_ be, and he isn’t sure he can shut up about it, but he’s also distinctly aware that he’s only mortal, and that despite the fact that he’s married to the king, this is not his home, not his world. He doesn’t know how things work here.

Oh, he does have an idea, because he has several vague memories of his childhood on his grandmother’s heels, but there is more than a decade between him now and those memories, and she herself couldn’t know much about it.

He walks up to the room where he’d found Julien the day before, and sits at the same place he had. It _is_ a very comfortable nook, so he opens his book and starts reading it. The tale is- vaguely familiar, though he can’t be sure if it’s because he’s read it before or because it follows the same tragic storyline of almost every other tale he has ever heard. There’s a god who angers a spirit and is turned into a child, making him lose control of his most powerful powers. His wife leaves him, and so he kills himself out of grief.

He closes the book, because one such story is enough, which is when he realizes he isn’t alone: Julien is in the room.

“Hey, Kid.” He slides his fingers through his own hair, feeling suddenly awkward.

“Jeremy.” The kid says, hesitant. “Hello. I see you’re enjoying a book.”

“Yeah, though if every story is like the first one I’ll cry before I’m done with it.” Jeremy smiles.

“Oh?” Julien tilts his head to the side, slightly, and the movement makes Jeremy think of Jean, the night before. He feels his smile fall, for just a second, before he forces it back up.

“Yeah. I mean, the main character is cursed, his wife leaves him because of it and he dies in the end. It’s very tragic.”

Julien gives him a strange smile, one that looks out of place on his face. “You shouldn’t worry about it. Curses rarely happen upon those who don’t deserve it. Fate finds a way to punish those who are not worth it.”

“That’s-” Jeremy stops himself. He wants to say it’s bullshit, but he doesn’t have enough knowledge of how this world works to say it with conviction. Still, he doesn’t think anyone deserves that suffering. He sighs, instead. “Do you know where Jean is?”

Julien purses his lips. “Busy.”

“He’s always busy, isn’t he?” Jeremy crosses his legs, tilts his body towards Julien.

“It’s not easy to rule a place such as this,” Julien answers. 

“I suppose not.” Jeremy concedes. “But what about you? You’re often very busy, too. What is it that you do?”

“Whatever it is that needs to be done.” Julien shrugs. Jeremy sighs, again.

“You know, you shouldn’t let Jean use you like this. You’re just a kid. You should be having fun and playing around.”

“You shouldn’t worry about me, Jeremy. I’m fine. More than that. It’s good here. Sometimes kids can’t be only kids, and that’s ok.”

“But-” Julien shakes his head, and touches Jeremy’s wrists. His hands are calloused, and Jeremy frowns.

“Listen. I have to go now, ok? I’m glad you’re enjoying your book.” He then turns around to leave.

“Right.” Jeremy says to the empty room. “Right.”

  
  
  


“Here to babysit me?” He asks Kevin, as soon as he gets in not two minutes after Julien is gone. Kevin laughs, awkward.

“I- no. I thought we could go to the river again.”

“Alright.” Jeremy puts the book down on where he was sitting, and gets up to follow Kevin.

There’s a long minute of silence, in which Kevin seems to be working up the courage to say something. Jeremy lets him, without breaking it, because he isn’t exactly in the mood to have a conversation.

“Are you ok, Jeremy?”

The question surprises him. It’s the first time someone asks him that, ever since he got here. He doesn’t know what to answer. “I guess,” he shrugs. “It could be worse. Jean is nice, when he isn’t angry. And you’re good company. But I miss my grandmother.”

“Not your parents?”

Jeremy lets out an awkward laugh. “It sounds horrible, doesn’t it? But I’ve never met my father, and me and my mother- we don’t get on very well. She likes to have things done her own way, and just-” he sighs. “I don’t think she likes me very much either. My grandma, though. We haven’t seen each other in very long, but I miss her. Now more than ever. She’d know… everything about this place.” He feels the wetness at the corners of his eyes just as his voice breaks. “Sorry.”

“It’s ok.” Kevin says, clearly not knowing what else to say. “I never met my mother, either. She was a god, here. But she died right after I was born, and I was raised by my godfather.”

“But you know how the- mortal world works.”

“My father is human. I lived a while with him, before I came to Jean for sanctuary. It became too dangerous to stay, you know? I didn’t want him to get hurt. He’s the only family I have left.”

“Your godfather?”

Kevin sighs. “That’s a very long story. Let’s not delve into it right now.”

“You’re a good friend, Kevin. Thank you.”

Kevin doesn’t answer.


	6. Chapter 6

Jeremy’s been avoiding Jean. It isn’t particularly hard, because the man is barely ever around, but it does require some effort. They’re used to eating together in the evenings, just the two of them, but ever since Jeremy argued with him, he’s been eating in his room, on his own. 

Well, with his book.

It’s a good book. There aren’t only sad stories in it, though those are definitely the majority. Gods and drama seem to go hand in hand, so it’s not particularly surprising. He’s already done with it, has already read every myth, but he likes to read the nice ones again when he’s feeling particularly bored.

It’s what he’s doing now, on the place he likes to call the aquarium room, sitting against the glass and propping the book on his knees. The fish are swimming behind him, and he likes to think that they’re enjoying the story, too.

Jeremy only notices Jean arrive because he sees a dark shape at the corner of his eyes, and looks up as he’s about to go back the way he came. 

It’s awkward. 

He isn’t angry anymore, not particularly, but he doesn’t want to apologize for what he said. He doesn’t think he’s wrong, anyway, even if he understands he’s the minority, because no one else seems to agree with him that Julien should be protected, not even the kid. Not even Renee, which was a surprise.

Jeremy lowers his book, and watches Jean. He’s frozen on the doorway, hands limp on his sides, and a surprising amount of sheepishness showing on his face. “I’ll leave you to your book,” he says, finally, and turns to leave.

Jeremy closes his book. “You know, it’s your palace, so if anyone should leave I think it should be me.” He starts getting up, but Jean shakes his head.

“Don’t.” He sighs. “It’s your palace, too.”

Jeremy bites his instinctive answer, because he doesn’t really want to argue again, and turns back to his book instead.

“You’re liking it?”

“Hm?”

“The book. Do you like it? I thought you might enjoy the stories.”

“Oh. It’s good. I’ve finished it a couple of days ago, but I’m rereading the ones I like the most.”

“I’m sorry,” Jean says. “We have a library here, but it’s not safe. The palace’s previous owner was… creative. The place is full of traps.”

“That’s alright.”

“Which of the tales did you like best?”

“Ah. It’s- this one. Where the main character pretended to be a mortal man and married this girl he had saved from burning as a witch. They live together for a long time, they have a kid. And one day his brother tries to kill the girl, but he saves her life by sharing his powers and becoming mortal.” Jeremy shrugs. “I like happy endings.”

Jean… smiles. “That’s sweet of you.”

Jeremy blushes. “Sweet. I guess.” And then: “You know, he reminds me of you.”

“Who?”

“The main character. Sacrificing something to save the life of a foolish mortal.”

Jean looks at him, and there’s so much softness on his face that he looks like a completely different person. He looks almost approachable. “I don’t think you’re foolish. Helplessly idealistic, maybe, but not foolish.”

“I think I should feel offended.”

“Don’t be. I admire your idealism. It’s important to fight for what you believe, it’s just-” Jean sighs. He doesn’t say anything else. Instead, he sits beside Jeremy, shoulder to shoulder, radiating warmth. 

There’s a long stretch of silence, in which Jeremy waits for Jean to continue, but he doesn’t. “I’m sorry,” he says, finally. “For getting angry the other day. And…” he pauses, and Jeremy has the impression he’s weighting his words. “I am glad that you liked the book,” he says, finally. Then gets up and leaves.

  
  
  


The next morning, Jeremy stumbles upon a veritable pile of books in front of his door, and finds himself smiling. He takes them all into his room, one by one, and puts them over his bed. He’ll sort through them later. He agreed to meet Kevin, today, and is already quite late.

Instead of Kevin, however, he finds a tall woman, with long blond hair and clothes which one would associate with a mortal. Expensive, too. The only thing that doesn’t make her seem too out of place is the medallion she is wearing, big, with Renee’s symbol.

“Hi, kitten,” she says, with the forcefully cheerful tone of someone who is doing something they don’t want to be doing. “I’m going to babysit you today, because Kevin is busy.”

“I don’t need a babysitter.” Jeremy rolls his eyes. “I promise you I’m not secretly a kid.”

The girl pats his shoulder, a gesture Jeremy would accept on anyone else, but from her it just comes out as patronizing. “Oh, kitten, but you do.”

Jeremy feels frustration well out inside him and he wants to growl at her, but he takes a deep breath instead. The girl _is_ rude, with a no-fucks-given vibe, but she seems to know what’s going on and is unwilling to coddle him.

Jeremy won’t miss this opportunity to ask some questions.

“So you’re a mortal too?”

“Yup.”

“... And you’re married to Renee?”

“Yup.”

“Why?”

“Love her,” she shrugs.

“Oh.”

“Not like any of the stories, right? But sometimes that’s how it is, kitten. You marry because you love them and they love you back. Not always. Usually they marry for politics, to make their position stronger. But Renee has never been like that. She doesn’t care about politics, just about doing what’s right.”

“Oh. What about Jean?”

The girl scoffs. “He doesn’t care about anything beyond politics.”

“And yet he married me.”

“To alleviate his heavy conscience, perhaps.”

“Why would he feel guilty over me?”

“Well, I wouldn’t say-” she starts, but Renee’s voice calls her name, interrupts her. “Sorry, kitten, gotta go. Maybe you should ask him, later, the reason he married you. And maybe he’ll even give you a straight answer.”

She starts to leave, and Jeremy starts going after her, but stops when a hand touches his arm. It’s Julien. He looks- tired. Too tired. It’s a terrible look on his young face. Jeremy blinks, then, and crouches to look Julien in the eyes.

“Hey, kid. How are you feeling?” Jeremy asks, to which Julien shrugs. “How about a nap, you and me?” Another shrug.

Jeremy starts walking, and Julien follows him. Usually, he’d fill the silence with some sort of chatter, but he doesn’t really feel like talking about anything. He’s known there’s something fishy going on for a while, that there’s something they’re not telling him. Something that makes Julien tired, and Jean disappear, and Renee fight, and Kevin babysit him.

Jeremy sighs.

“What did Allison tell you?” Julien asks.

“Nothing, really. Don’t worry.” Jeremy slides his hand through Julien’s hair, tussles it up. “Go take a nap, kid.”

Jeremy sinks on his seat, and crosses his arms. He feels… impatient. He wants to know what’s going on, was willing to wait until they trusted him, but every day that goes past makes this feeling on his chest grow bitter. He sighs, again, gets up. Paces. It doesn’t make him feel better, so he starts walking. Away.

Julien is Jean’s kid, but no one treats him like one. He has way too many responsibilities, and is always tired. Jean is always, eternally busy, except in the evenings, which is when they usually spend some time together. Renee is… he doesn’t know. Married, to a mortal. Queen of another kingdom? She’s more earth than water, but she does seem to answer to Jean, even if they seem more like friends than vassal and liege or whatever it is that this system works with.

And Kevin… with his mortal father and his dead mother, his that’s-a-long-story godfather and his weird relationship to Jean. _Sanctuary_. That implies he needs safety, from someone, something. And the palace is all destroyed, which at first Jeremy wrote it under “things that happen when a god loses control”, but now he thinks must have another reason entirely.

There’s a noise behind him, and Jeremy turns. He’s wandered past the gardens, into the woods, through the familiar path that takes him to the river. It’s getting dark, and he can’t see what made the noise, so he shrugs and keeps walking.

It’s a mistake.

Something hits him from behind and he falls down _hard_ , nose on the ground, leaves on his mouth. He sputters, trying to turn, but there’s a weight on his back, strong legs beside his waist stopping his move.

“Got you,” the voice says, and one hand holds his head down against the ground, making it hard to breath. He thinks _shit_ , he thinks _Jean can’t save me now_ , he thinks _i’m going to die here_. But he’s wrong, he’s wrong. The weight disappears just as suddenly as it appeared, and Jeremy feels he can breathe again.

He breathes then, deeply, once, twice, as the ground shakes beneath him. There’s the sound of thunder, blessedly, and a heavy downpour starts. Jeremy finds the strength to prop himself on his elbows and turn, just in time to see Jean in all of his glory, a sword in hands, his face absolute thunderous, thrust his sword against the neck of the person that attacked him.

“Oh, thank god,” he finds himself saying.

“What were you _thinking_?” Jean asks, yells, and it’s the first time Jeremy’s heard him raise his voice. Above them, thunder sounds again.

“I didn’t think-”

“Clearly!”

And that’s- it’s too much. Jeremy feels it explode, everything he’s been keeping buried for a while. He points his finger at Jean, and yells back. “Oh, fuck off! Ok? Fuck off! You don’t tell me anything about what’s going on, and you expect me to what? Magically figure out that the path I take every other day is dangerous? You can’t expect me to act on information I don’t have! I’m not a mind-reader!”

Jean’s mouth works open for a moment, then closes with a click. Thunder rolls of in the sky and the rain seems to get stronger for just a moment before it pelters off completely. Jeremy looks up at the sky, bewildered, and when he looks back at Jean the place he’d just been standing is empty.


	7. Chapter 7

He gets to his room absolutely drenched, with nothing in mind but burying himself under the covers and going to sleep, but he can’t — he had forgotten about the books. He growls, because he’s not angry enough to risk harming them, and decides he’s not going to deal with this right now. 

He leaves his room again, wet footsteps in his wake, and bumps into Renee just outside his door.

“Jeremy,” she says, quietly. She doesn’t seem surprised that he’s drenched, and instead just gestures at the space in front of her. “Walk with me.”

Jeremy falls into step beside her, and waits out her silence.

“You’re a smart person,” she says, carefully. “So you must have realized-”

“There’s something you’re not telling me.” He finishes for her.

“There’s something _ s  _ we  _ can’t  _ tell you.” She corrects him. “Despite the fact we think you should know, we can’t go against his wishes.”

“ _ His _ ?”

Renee doesn’t answer. Instead, she continues: “That only means that we cannot tell you, not that you cannot figure it out.”

“Right.”

“There’s something fishy about Julien, isn’t there?” Renee asks serenely.

“The kid?”

Renee hums. She doesn’t say anything else, so he presses: “What’s wrong with the kid?”

“You don’t have to worry about him, Jeremy. He’s safe. As safe as one can be, I suppose. He’s very powerful, even if he isn’t always in control.”

“I don’t  _ understand _ .”

“That’s alright. You will.” Renee steps into a room, and then: “Ah, here we are.”

A woman comes up to them, one towel in hands, and starts drying his hair before he says anything else. Jeremy is about to say something, but Renee shakes her head, so he suffers through it. Another woman comes with a change of clothing, and starts helping him put it on. It’s weird, it’s very weird, but he suffers through it, too.

“Think about what I said, Jeremy.” Renee taps his shoulder once, twice, then walks away.

  
  
  


It seems like fate that Jeremy stumbles upon Julien first thing in the morning, and Julien doesn’t notice him there, seemingly occupied by his own thoughts. Jeremy waits until he starts walking, and once he’s distant enough, follows him. If there’s something fishy, he thinks, this is the best way to figure it out.

The kid seems to be grumbling, but Jeremy is both too far to listen in and he’s sure he wouldn’t understand the language anyway. Eventually, someone else comes through the corridor — Kevin’s figure is unmistakable, he’s so  _ tall _ — and Jeremy is forced to stay behind so he isn’t found.

“Jean!” Kevin calls, and Jeremy freezes. He looks around, he looks behind him, but Jean is nowhere to be seen. “I was looking for you.”

“What is it?” Someone answers, but that’s not- that’s  _ Julien’s _ voice.

And, suddenly, it makes sense.

  
  


Jeremy doesn’t wander outside the castle, this time, though he does wander around. He thinks  _ fuck that _ . He thinks  _ I’m going to figure things out for myself _ . He finds himself at the edge of the most destroyed part of the palace, rubble all around him, sunlight coming from the holes in the walls, the roof.

It’s sad, in a way, because it’s very clear how pretty the palace used to be before the destruction. He thinks about who must have owned it before Jean, and remembers that he mentioned a library — that seems like as good a place as any other, for information, and it takes him a while to go through the place and find where it is.

He tries the doorknob, and realizes the place isn’t even locked. If Jean wanted to keep him out of this place, he should have added some degree of security — there is  _ none _ . He opens the door, and the first thought that comes to mind is that the place is dark. There’s only a window, which doesn’t offer nearly enough light to illuminate the whole room, specially since there are so many shelves.

He takes a step inside. There’s a chill coming up from his back, but he ignores it in favor of exploring out. There’s a book at the first shelf, different from every other. It’s beautiful, with its shiny hardcover and golden lettering. Jeremy stretches his arm to take it, but a hand stops him just as he is about to touch it.

“Do you thrive in making dumb decisions and putting your life in jeopardy?” It’s Julien.  _ Jean _ . It’s Jean. Jeremy blinks, frowns, then looks up again to realize the book doesn’t look nearly as shiny as it did the first time around.

Jeremy feels irritation swell inside of him. “Maybe I wouldn’t make what you consider to be dumb decisions if I had access to all the facts,  _ Jean _ .”

“Who told you?”

“No matter what you think, I’m not that dumb! I’ve known there was something going on for ages. I want  _ answers _ . I want to stop making choices that might hurt me because I don’t know what’s going on.”

He can almost feel the way Julien deflates, how his fingers go slack on his wrist and his shoulders slump. He puts his hand on his face, then sighs. “I’ll give you your answers. Just- not now.” Jeremy is about to complain, when Julien keeps going. “Tonight. Come out and eat with me. And please, just- stick to the safer parts of the palace.”

“Ok,” Jeremy says. “Ok, Julien- I mean,  _ Jean _ . This will take some getting used to.”

Jean starts walking away, and Jeremy follows.

  
  
  


When Jeremy arrives at the dining hall, Jean is already there. He looks like himself, though he seems absolutely tired, with his eyes closed and his head propped on one of his hands.

“Jean,” he calls, and Jean looks up.

“Jeremy.” His voice is soft. He gestures at the spot in front of him, and Jeremy hesitates before sitting.

He doesn’t really know if Jean is going to answer his questions. He doesn’t really know if he knows what to ask, what he needs to know. For a minute, there is only the noise of their cutlery against their plates. Jeremy observes Jean, notices the way his shoulders are squared, as if he’s expecting a fight. Jeremy sighs, deeply, and decides to start with the question he finds most pressing.

“Why the deceit?”

“Deceit?” Jean looks up, frowning.

“You know, kid-you and adult-you. Why? I can’t really understand the point of it.” That’s the part Jeremy finds the hardest to swallow. What could Jean possibly accomplish with that? Control Jeremy’s opinion on Jean? Spy on him? Julien was always very busy, anyway, and whenever they did talk about Jean, Julien always had a bad word.

“It’s not by choice.” Jean interrupts his thoughts. “I- was cursed. To be a child during the day, and an adult at night. It makes everything very difficult.”

Jeremy frowns. He remembers what Julien told him, how fate only curses those who deserve it, and purses his lips. For all of his faults, Jeremy doesn’t think Jean deserves it. He feels like he should say something about that, but doesn’t want to take Jean out of an answering mood.

He doesn’t know if he’ll ever have this chance again.

“Right,” he says. He’ll get back to this eventually. “So, why did you marry me?”

“I didn’t lie about that. You offered yourself to me, as a sacrifice, and I didn’t want you to die.” He says it hesitantly, as if he doesn’t think Jeremy will believe him. 

Instead of addressing that, he says instead: “Allison said you care a lot about politics.”

“I intend to be Emperor.”

“What, really? Is that why you’re warring?”

Jean grimaces. “You could say that, but not entirely. I wasn’t always a king. I was born to a clan that served another king, and my parents sold me out. A man named Tetsuji raised me, with his nephew Riko and his godchild, Kevin. He wanted us each to rule one of the kingdoms and he was going to make himself Emperor. But Kevin left, and then there was me and Riko, and his plans changed. He made me kill this palace’s previous owner — the king of water — and take his place. I wasn’t supposed to, originally. This was to be Kevin’s. But this kingdom confers a lot of power, and he wanted it. After I had it, I… refused to give it to him. And I’ve been refusing ever since. It’s been… well.” He doesn’t say anything else.

“I’m sorry.”

Jean shrugs, like none of it matters and all of it is in the past. It’s Jeremy’s turn to grimace. He feels like he should say something, or maybe go around the table and give Jean a hug. He doesn’t. He’s not sure he’s going to be well-received.

“Do you have any other questions?” Jean asks, once the silence has lasted for some time.

“No, I- not right now.” He does, still, have things he wants to know. But Jean looks tired, and this conversation seems emotionally exhausting if the theme keeps up, and he feels bad already for making Jean talk about his past.

“Then please, excuse me.”

“Jean.” Jeremy calls just as he leaves. Jean turns. “Is there anything I can do? To help you? You look tired.”

Jean smiles. “Yeah.”


	8. Chapter 8

Jeremy starts helping with the reconstruction efforts. He hadn’t known there was one going on, but now that he’s in charge of it — and how weird is that? — it seems silly that he hadn’t realized. Just a few days ago, he was feeling bored and had nothing to do. Now, he has a feeling that he won’t know what boredom feels like for a while.

It’s a good feeling.

“I talked to Jean,” Jeremy tells Kevin. He’s very strong, stronger than a normal human, and has been helping them move around the rubble. “He told me about- growing up with you and your godfather.”

“He killed her.”

“What?”

“Tetsuji. He killed my mother. To get her power. She was the queen of the air kingdom. When I figured it out, I- I couldn’t stay.”

“So you left.”

“Yes. She had left me a letter, telling me about my father. I went after him. I thought I’d be hidden enough in the mortal world, but I think Tetsuji knew he was my father. He kept sending Ravens after him, and after he almost died I couldn’t-” Kevin stops himself. “Then I came back.

“You’re a very strong warrior.”

Kevin frowns. “Yes? Tetsuji trained us all to be.”

“Why are you here and not out there, helping Jean?”

Kevin hesitates. “I don’t think he ever forgave me for leaving him behind.”

Jeremy looks behind him, towards Kevin, who has stopped carrying the rubble and is currently looking at the sky, face blank.

“Have you ever apologized?” He doesn’t know if it would be enough, doesn’t think it would. But it’d be a start. And at the very least, they could try to be friends again. Kevin doesn’t answer him, though, and instead of pushing Jeremy decides to change the subject. “When you were with your father — did you ever go to Hawaii?”

  
  
  


He’s all sweaty and pleasantly tired, planning to forego dinner and go to sleep, when a hand stops him. He turns, and finds himself face-to-face with a woman whose face he vaguely recognizes from his wedding day. She’s all business, no pleasantries.

“We need you to go through the plans for the west wing and approve them.” She thrusts a folder at him, and he takes it more out of surprise than anything else.

“Shouldn’t you ask Jean?”

“He doesn’t have the time, and we’re already weeks behind schedule. He said we should just ask you, that he has complete trust in your ability to fix this place.”

Jeremy feels himself blush, and a warm feeling fills his body. It’s good, he thinks, to feel included. “Alright,” he says. “Show me what you’ve got.”

The woman nods her approval.

  
  
  


Later, Jean finds him in his room, reviewing the plans for the whole palace. His floor’s a mess of papers and pictures, and he keeps muttering to himself and making corrections. He doesn’t actually realize Jean is around until his husband knocks on the doorsill. When Jeremy looks up, he notices Jean looks very relaxed, supporting his weight against the doorframe.

“You said I could help with the rebuilding efforts,” he blushes, feeling awkward.

In response, Jean smiles. His face looks different, when he smiles. “I did.”

Jeremy nods, and doesn’t really know what else to say, so he keeps looking at his husband, taking him in.

“Can I come in?”

“Sure. Sorry about the mess.”

“Not at all.” Jean sits beside him, and looks at the paper he’s currently revising. “Alvarez said you approved her plans for the west wing.” He comments.

“Should I have not?” Jeremy hesitates, unsure.

“You’re the prince consort.” Jean shrugs. “What you say, goes.”

He says it with such naturality that Jeremy doesn’t know how to react for a whole minute. “That’s. Thank you.”

“I should be the one thanking you. You’ve made my life infinitely easier, you have no idea.” 

“Well,” Jeremy gestures around. “I think I do.”

Jean chuckles. He  _ chuckles _ . Jeremy feels faint. “But that’s not what I’m here for.”

“Oh?” Jeremy inches his head to the side, something he’s seen Jean do a few times, and waits for an answer.

“I would like to teach you how to fight- how to defend yourself. Just so if anything happens and I’m not around to protect you.”

Jeremy nods. “Yeah, ok. That makes sense.”

“Good.” Jean says, getting up. “Come on, then, I’ve had a training room prepared for us.” He offers Jeremy his hand, to help him up.

“Right now?” He asks, even as he accepts Jean’s help.

“As good a time as any.”

  
  
  


To be quite honest, Jeremy didn’t expect Jean to be a patient teacher, but, somehow, he is. It’s hard to concentrate, because Jean’s foregone his overflowing gown and is wearing fitted clothing that is much more suitable for fighting, and it doesn’t hide anything about his muscles. Jeremy finds himself feeling stupid, missing cues and just overall not hearing what Jean’s just said because he was busy looking at his arms.

Jean doesn’t raise his voice once. He doesn’t get frustrated. He just explains in again, demonstrates what Jeremy is supposed to do, and asks him to copy him. Thumb outside, hands protecting his face and using his hip to propel his punches.  _ Jab, cross, jab, cross, jab, cross. _

“Good,” he says. “Very good.”

He’s also free with his praise, which is both completely unexpected and also in some ways not unexpected at all. There’s a strange gentleness to Jean that Jeremy has only seen in flashes before, but that now that there are no more lies between them and the air feels…  _ clearer _ seems to be present most of the time.

Their training becomes a nightly thing, a ritual. Jeremy will help out with the reconstructions efforts — and it’s just so rewarding to see the palace getting into shape again —, Jean will find him going over the remaining plans, and then they will train.

It gets harder to concentrate the better Jeremy gets at fighting, because he goes from copying what Jean is doing from a distance to having to  _ engage  _ him and  _ fight  _ him, which ultimately leads to him committing stupid mistakes and finding himself with his back against the mat.

Over and over and over.

Jean always looks down at him, a very self-satisfied smile adorning his face, and offers him a hand up. Sometimes it’s too early in the evening, and Jeremy has to go on sparring — not that he thinks it’s something bad, particularly —, so he takes Jean’s hand and lets himself revel on the effortless strength Jean shows all the time, the fluidity of his movements.

It’s just that other times it’s very hard to think of anything other than  _ this is my husband _ and  _ I would really like to kiss him _ , so when Jean asks “Again?” with his smirk firmly in place and hand stretched out towards him, Jeremy feels too breathless, and has to shake his head negatively.

“No, I don’t think so.”


	9. Chapter 9

“We should have let this place for last,” Jeremy complains after another near-miss with a trap. “At this rate, this will take us the whole month. We can’t go through a single shelf without triggering something, it sucks.”

“You’re the one who wanted to have access to books sooner rather than later.” Kevin tells him, frustration clear on his voice.

“Well, yes. Can you blame me?”

“I can.”

Silence. They work on their own for a while, and Jeremy lets himself think about his husband. He isn’t at all what he’d been expecting at first, and not at all what he’d thought of him before they started to spend more time together. Jeremy wants to know more about him. He wants to know everything there is to know about him. What makes him happy. What makes him tick.

He knows he won’t get it out of Jean himself.

“Say, Kevin.” He tries not to let too much curiosity bleed into his voice, but feels like he fails at it. 

Kevin doesn’t seem to notice, however, because his answer is a distracted: “Hm?”

“What was Jean like when he was a kid?”

“Much like he is now. Quiet. Moody. It was different, then, because of Riko and Tetsuji, but- well, he hasn’t changed much. Why?”

“I’m curious.” Jeremy shrugs.

“About Jean’s childhood?” Jeremy looks back at Kevin, who’s looking back at him with raised eyebrows. “What, really?”

Jeremy shrugs again. “Yeah, I mean. He’s interesting. He’s an interesting person.”

“He’s just Jean.” Kevin says. “Sure, he’s a great fighter, but if he could he’d waste all of his time reading books.”

Jeremy feels his lips twitch against his will. “Yeah,” he says. “Yes, he would.”

And it’s sweet, isn’t it? That after everything Jean went through, he’s not a violent person. That if he could, instead of fighting, he’d spend his days reading books. He’s smart, smarter than most people Jeremy has ever met, and he’s- soft. Not fragile, exactly, because to be where he is right now he’s needed strength and resilience, but at the same time… Jeremy feels like Jean’s protected his heart so fiercely that the lightest breeze would be able to shatter it.

Jeremy feels himself pulled out of his thoughts by a gasp, and when he looks at Kevin again he’s looking back at him with wide eyes. “What. Jeremy. No.”

Jeremy blinks. “What?”

“I- do you  _ like _ Jean?”

Jeremy raises his eyebrows. “What? He’s my husband. And anyway, you said it yourself, he’s a nice person.”

“That’s not what I meant.” Kevin says. And then, in a serious tone, he adds: “Jeremy. I’m not sure he knows how to love.”

“I-” Jeremy thinks about denying, but isn’t sure he’d be telling the truth. So he sighs, deeply. “It doesn’t matter.” He’s about to say something else, but his eye catches the title of a book, and he gets distracted.  _ The book of curse-breaking _ . Jeremy thinks,  _ huh _ . He thinks,  _ interesting _ . He looks back at Kevin, who is currently busy with his own couple of shelves, and takes the book out, hides it amongst his folders.

It doesn’t trigger any traps, which is a very good thing, otherwise Jeremy might have gotten in trouble.

  
  
  


The book turns out to be very useful, in that it has a counter-curse ritual that seems like it will work on Jean’s curse. He doesn’t know exactly what kind of curse it was — doesn’t understand enough about magic to know it — but a “curse that forces your enemy into a more delicate body” seems like it’s close enough.

It sounds painful, however, and requires some ingredients that sound a lot like bullshit ingredients (blood of a willing mortal, for instance, because how would a spell know if the mortal is willing or not? Is it only a matter of ethics that the writer said the mortal should be willing?) — but then again, he doesn’t understand enough about magic to say it either way.

“No.” He doesn’t expect Jean’s vehement denial. “I said no, Jeremy.”

“This is literally the solution to your biggest problem right now. Renee said the curse leaves you vulnerable, and your powers unsteady.” They’re sitting together on Jeremy’s bed, Jean having just arrived to take him into training, and the book is lying between the both of them, open exactly on the right pages.

“It’s too dangerous! I’m not going to use your blood on a ritual in the off chance that it will solve my problem.” He shakes his head. “Especially since it’s not a deadly curse, and I am  _ fine _ .”

“Look-”

“ _ No _ .” 

“But-”

Jean closes the book with an aggressive gesture, and tilts his body just a little towards Jeremy. “Why are you being so insistent? It’s a painful ritual. Dangerous. It might leave you with a magical scar forever.”

“Is it so hard to believe that I want to do this because I care about you?”

No answer. Instead, Jean just looks at him, wide eyes and an open mouth, his body startled away as if Jeremy had just hit him. The ground shakes beneath them, making so some of the papers on Jeremy’s desk topple to the ground. 

“Jean,” he starts saying, but Jean raises his arms to stop him. His eyes are just this shade of too blue.

Jean gets up, hesitates for barely a second by the door, then leaves. 

Jeremy lets out a breath, feeling his heart break and not wanting to give in to it. “Damn it!”

  
  
  


Renee finds him an hour later, steadily going through the counter-curse book while stubbornly sitting on Jean’s favorite room. She’s sporting a very peaceful expression, which is always a sign that there’s something going on.

“Jean’s on a mood,” she says, sitting beside him.

“I think I scared him with my feelings.” He shakes his fingers towards her, as if casting an evil spell, then closes his book. “I told him I cared about him, and he just left.” He looks at her, but her face doesn’t betray anything.

“Feelings are scary, Jeremy. Jean had a very complicated upbringing, so you need to be patient with him.”

Jeremy sighs. “We’re married, Renee. I don’t understand what the problem is. It’s not like I asked him to like me back.”

Renee puts her hand on his knee. “Oh, Jeremy, don’t you know?”

“What?”

She smiles at him. “He’s not scared because you like him. It’s been obvious for a while. He already knew it, I think. He’s scared because he just realized he likes you back.”

“No he doesn’t.” Jeremy feels like a toddler for arguing with her, but it’s stronger than him. Honestly, it feels impossible. Jean wouldn’t have just  _ left _ if that were the case.

“Jeremy. Trust me. You don’t really know how it is that he acts with other people, I think, but he acts very differently with you. Protective. And, dare I say,  _ sweet _ ?” She chuckles.

“That’s not fair.”

“Give him time, Jeremy.”

Jeremy rests his head on Renee’s shoulder. She pats his back, then shakes her head and pulls him into a hug.

“Thank you.”

“I know what it is to find love unexpectedly. I know what it is to think it isn’t requitted. It’s very painful. I’m glad you won’t have to go through that, though I understand our situations are considerably different.”

“Tell me about it,” he asks.

“Some other time. I need to go back into the meeting, lest Jean beheads someone undeservedly.” 

Jeremy laughs. “Thank you, again.”

“You are very welcome.”


	10. Chapter 10

Jean’s avoiding him. They don’t really have much time together, but they have rituals, and Jean’s been giving him increasingly stupid excuses to miss them. It hurts, but Jeremy remembers Renee’s words and tries to give him time. It’s hard, but he tries.

Every night he thinks maybe Jean will stop being stupid and they’ll talk, but then Jean sends someone to tell him he’s busy and Jeremy is forced to face his night alone. He starts spending more time in the library, which at this point is really almost all trap-free. He hasn’t stopped searching about ways to stop a curse, so he’s been going through the collection quite steadily, and making a pile on books about curses and even some on basic magic theory. Since his training hour has been suspended indefinitely, he even finds himself learning what he can about it.

It’s interesting and absolutely crazy in equal measures. The book says that mortals can’t really do much with magic unless they have some sort of special blood or are like Kevin — demigods. Still, Jeremy finds himself weaving charms over his clothes, little things that promise protection and health and good luck.

That’s probably what saves his life.

  
  
  


It starts like this: he’s sulking in the corridor, walking back towards the library, when he realizes he’s being followed. He turns, expecting it to be someone that wants to talk to him about reconstruction efforts, just in time to evade a punch. He moves his head to the side, instinct more than training, and the punch goes  _ through _ the wall.

“Shit.”

“You can say that again,” the man says. He’s wearing all black, and a mask that makes Jeremy think of those medieval doctors, with a long beak. He blinks, then evades another punch, not realizing it was a distraction until a foot comes barreling against his legs, painfully, and he falls.

Somehow, he doesn’t hit his head. Somehow, he’s still awake enough to try and roll away when the man brings down a black dagger. “This is a warning for your husband.” The man says, which gives Jeremy time to roll to the side, so the dagger clips his body instead of lodging itself on his stomach like the man probably planned it to. 

It’s still painful, but not crippingly so.

Jeremy tries to get back upon his feet. The man walks menacingly towards him, step after the other, and Jeremy realizes he’s being toyed with. He knows he can’t win this. The man knows he can’t win this. Jeremy is only delaying his own death.

He doesn’t want to die.

He doesn’t want Jean to find his lifeless body. Doesn’t want him to carry this guilt. He gets up, because if he’s going to die he’s at least going to die fighting. He’s going to die trying to survive. He throws himself against the man — which surprises him — and tries to use the surprise to wrestle him out of his dagger.

It doesn’t work. The man stabs him once on his shoulder, then again on his stomach. “I’m going to enjoy seeing the life go out of your eyes,” the man says.

Blessedly, beautifully, another voice says behind him. “I could say the same about you.”

It’s Jean.

He’s a little kid, because it’s day, and his eyes are blue, blue, blue. There’s a sword on his hands that seems like it’s made out of pure ice, and the walls of the palace are trembling, the ground is trembling, there’s rain outside.

Jeremy topples to the ground, bleeding everywhere. He feels it warm on his back, on his arm, on his stomach. He’s dizzy, oh so dizzy, and he rests his head against the ground. He doesn’t know if he’s going to survive this, doesn’t know if Jean will manage to fight off his attacker and help him before he bleeds to death.

He wishes there was something he could do to help, wishes Jean had let him break the curse, wishes the curse was broken. The pain on his wounds get worse, and Jeremy finds himself going in and out of consciousness for a while, unable to keep up with the fighting. He blinks and there are ice stakes, blinks and they’re on stalemate, blinks and the man is on the ground with the sword straight through his heart. Jean is kneeling beside him, hand on his stomach, and saying something Jeremy can’t quite parse.

There’s something wrong about the scene.

Jean’s eyes are still blue, but that’s ok. Jean’s not wearing his sparring clothes, but that’s ok. Jean’s hair is cascading around them, his face contorted in something like worry and oh- “You look like an adult.”

Jean says something again, but there’s ringing on Jeremy’s ears and he can’t hear it.

“You look like an adult, and it’s day.”

Jean craddles his face, and Jeremy frowns because his hand is bloody. He doesn’t like it. He turns towards it, but Jean doesn’t let it and instead gently, ever so gently, turns his head towards his face again. There’s something like warm pressure against his lips and he thinks  _ oh, he’s kissing me _ .

That’s his last thought for a while.

  
  
  


He shoots up on his bed- though it isn’t quite his bed, it isn’t quite his room. There’s an arm around his body and a body behind his back, and it takes him a while to place the feeling of wrongness he feels on not feeling any pain. He turns, and finds Jean laying down with one of his arms behind his head, looking at him with steady, grey eyes.

“Hi,” Jeremy says, croaks. The word feels weird on his mouth, and he frowns. “What happened?”

“You almost died.” There’s a flash of blue, there and gone, and Jean sits up. “Renee healed you.”

“The curse?” Jeremy asks, because he remembers being day and he remembers looking at Jean’s very adult face.

There’s a pause before Jean answers. “ _ Broken _ .”

“What, really?”

“I- your blood was spilled on the grounds of the palace. You wanted my curse to break, didn’t you? I saw your research on the library.”

“Just like that? Spilling my blood was enough? And you made all that fuss about it.”

“ _ You almost died _ .” Jean says, looking at Jeremy’s eyes. There’s so much feeling hidden behind Jean’s irises that Jeremy feels breathless for a second. “There was nothing  _ just _ about it.”

He holds Jeremy’s arm,  _ gently _ , and pulls him. Jeremy lets himself be pulled, and ends up on Jean’s lap, with Jean’s arm around him. Jeremy lets himself rest his head on Jean’s shoulder.

“You kissed me.” Jeremy remembers, suddenly. “Did I dream that?”

“No.”

“So you  _ do _ like me,” he says, words hidden against Jean’s skin. They’re so close that Jeremy can hear his heartbeat, the way it increases steadily.

“I  _ love _ you,” Jean says, and Jeremy has to move away, has to look him in the face. There’s a softness to the way Jean is looking at him that makes Jeremy want to hide his face again.

Later, he’ll figure out that Kevin killed Riko and is now very much a completely different person. Later, he’ll meet Neil and Andrew, who share the throne of the fire kingdom. Later, he’ll help Jean plan for an assault against Tetsuji in the fortress of air. Later, he’ll probably make consort of the Emperor.

Now, though, he presses his nose into the skin of Jean’s neck, and breathes him in. “I love you too.”

**Author's Note:**

> Alright, thank you for reading! Hope you've liked the fic! It was an experience to write it, and I think it may very well be my longest fic thus far. With chapters! And it's finished! Also, if you wish to see more of Deya's art, you can check out [her tumblr!](https://andreil-minyasten.tumblr.com/)


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